Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (21 page)
Read Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) Online
Authors: David Coy
Tags: #dystopian, #space, #series, #contagion, #infections, #fiction, #alien, #science fiction, #space opera, #outbreak
There are no monsters. Only the ones in your mind.
He repeated it over and over as
he worked his way through the dense foliage.
* * *
The Xerc wasn’t working, at least
not this time. Each beat of his heart throbbed through the joints of his feet
like something mean and hot. As the minutes passed, the pain increased, and he
cursed through grinding teeth for not bringing back more of the drug when he
had the chance. He was sweating profusely, and the pillow under his head was
wet as if he’d dipped it in water.
Deep in his tissues, the larvae
started to move, set in motion by some chemical heat. Now, as large as slivers,
they began to whip their wiry bodies, squirming with mindless, flawless impulse
to seek larger and larger veins, following the trace of rich oxygen to its
source—Geary’s lungs.
The first larva reached his heart
and was flushed through it and down into his lung in a single feverish
contraction, lodging in the narrow and oxygen rich tip of one of the lung’s
capillaries. It was followed by hundreds more over the next few minutes as
the migration continued. One by one, the larvae squirmed through the thin wall
of lung tissue, leaving a minute trace of blood from each microscopic wound.
But when the larvae passed through this alien host’s lungs to the air, the same
secretions that inflamed the host’s feet, inflamed its lungs as well, causing
more irritation and edema. Geary’s lungs began to fill with fluid.
The writhing numbers increased as
the minutes passed, and sticking in the mucous of Geary’s lungs, they continued
to wriggle.
Geary coughed and coughed some
more, bending up red faced with each one.
Raised to the back of his throat
by the action of coughing, the larvae continued to squirm, and Geary swallowed
and washed the wriggling larvae down. Down they surfed, in
two
's and
three
's on a
thin wave of pink sputum, heading to the food-rich incubator of Geary’s gut.
As the irritation increased,
Geary began to gasp and tried to rise up. Weakened, he fell back and lay
wheezing. He coughed and swallowed until he could cough no more, a little
weaker each time, then he gasped, fish-like, as thick fluid filled his lungs.
He struggled for the next few
minutes, losing life with each truncated and labored breath, his eyes going
slowly from wide-eyed panic to dull resignation.
He died with a final red and weak
spastic cough, his bony hands clutching the soiled sheets.
* * *
Mike stopped at the entrance to
the cave. The locator was pointing directly down into it, and he wished the
thing had made a big mistake. He waved it back and forth, and watched as the
device confirmed his fear with each sweep past that dark, gaping maw.
He turned the locator off and put
it in his pocket with a scowl. No one told him he’d be going into a cave. It
was just the kind of place something mean would live. He almost turned around
and went back; and if anyone other than Eddie had told him to do this, he would
have. It was dark and looked dangerous in the cave. He had to think about this.
He sat on a fallen log and
watched the opening for a minute. Then he stood up and walked a little closer
to it, feeling the hair on the back of his neck crawl up with each step.
“Hey,” he said in a normal tone.
“Anybody home . . . ?”
He stepped closer, trying to
pierce the darkness with his sight.
“Hey!” he yelled.
Slowly, cautiously, he started
in.
The pitch was steep, and he had
to cling to the foliage to keep from falling down. As he approached the bottom
of the incline, the plant life thinned quite a bit. It took his eyes a moment
to adjust to the dim light; but after a while, he could make out the rows of
barrels in the back. A puddle of water covered the entire cave floor. He’d have
to slog through it to get to the barrels.
These boots are old, anyways.
He started across the puddle,
stepping high and trying not to splash too much.
It took him just a second to
figure out how to open the top on the barrel. He had to lean way in, snag the
bag with two fingers and pull it up.
Something began to bother him
about it all. This was wrong somehow. He almost put the bag back, but thought
again about Eddie and how it would piss him off to come back without them.
He opened the floppy plastic bag
and began to fill the pockets of his coveralls with the little bottles. He
worked quickly; he couldn’t wait to get out of there. When he had exactly
twenty, he stopped, folded the bag up and put it back in the bottom of the
barrel.
He climbed out of the cave, set
the locator on channel one and found the direction home.
He’d gone just a few meters when
he felt an itch on the top of his right foot.
She could
see a good distance in either direction. The ravine was long, stretching for
kilometers either way, blocking her path. Donna stood on the brink and looked
down. She thought about trying to go around it, but decided the added hike
wasn’t worth it. The ravine was deep but not very wide. The sides were steep,
but she thought she could climb down, if with difficulty. Her bones and muscles
still ached from the fall and the thought of stretching and straining in a
downhill climb made her groan. She had no choice.
She’d been moving all day.
Fatigue hung on her like wet wool. She wanted desperately to sleep; to soak in
warm water and sleep between clean sheets. She hoped she’d been traveling in
the right direction, but until the moons came up, she had no way of knowing for
sure.
She tried to replay the flight
over the installation; picturing every detail she could recall, looking for
some geographical feature in the ragged tapestry of her memory that she might
recognize as the one before her. She hoped to see in those images some slash
in the terrain, a gouge in the green landscape, which could be this ravine and
so confirm that her direction was taking her back. But translating what she
saw from the lofty height of two thousand meters into the claustrophobic view
down into the green was impossible. She could have been anywhere.
The idea of tumbling down the
slope end over end sent a queasy flush through her midsection. She’d have to be
careful going down.
She hurt all over. The thought of
another fall or tumble made her palms sweat even more.
The sun was getting low. She
looked around and down into the tops of the trees in the ravine, as she tried
to locate another grove of the huge trees that provided cover for her the night
before. There were none.
Plowing and stomping her way
through the jungle, one foot at a time, had consumed her energy and her
thoughts, blinding her to the dreadful certainty of spending another endless
night in the green.
She was standing on high ground,
at least as high as anything she’d been on all day. Compared to the dark and
wet-looking ravine below her, this spot was a bright and clean, screened-in
porch of a place.
But it wouldn’t do.
She had to have something
around
her, to keep the things
off
her when the sun sank into the
green mire, and her world was awash in swirling, crawling blackness.
* * *
She looked around like a
frightened animal, not knowing what to do, wanting sanctuary, but not knowing
where to find it. Suddenly a thought came to her, an image of what was needed;
a perfectly sensible answer in the form of a spontaneous vision.
I’ll build it. A tent. A yurt thing.
She scanned the vicinity and took
inventory of the needed components for the yurt. She found a piece of vine that
was just the right thickness and yanked and yanked until she pulled down a long
enough piece of it. That was a start. She found two tall, thin-stalked plants
that were about the right distance apart. She bent one over and tied it off to
a thick branch close to the ground and then arched the other over it to form a
crude and crooked tent-like frame. She tied the second one off. The enclosure
would be small, but that could work to her advantage. Working around the frame,
she uprooted most of the short plants and stomped the ground as flat as she
could inside what would be the yurt’s frame. She then looped the vine around
the frame starting at the top and making three complete loops around before
she ran out. She then had a frame, which she could easily fill with broad, flat
leaves. She found several of the broadleaf plants nearby, stripped off the
leaves and started her pile of organic roofing next to the framework.
She spent some time dressing the
skeleton, by removing smaller branches and straightening the framework as best
she could. Starting at the top, she laid the first leaf and bent it over the
arch where the two arches met. She stood back and considered it. The leaf
flopped around on its own, turned and slid down the side.
That was wrong. She would have to start at the
base and work around, laying each one over the one below as she worked up. That
way, the structure might be rain—and bug-resistant—providing no root-digging,
mandible-grinding monsters sniffed her out.
As a test, she leaned the leaf against
the base, folded it against the ground and tried to press it into place. It
flopped away like it was alive. Holding the leaf against the frame, she looked
around for some way to secure it.
How can I do this?
She needed more vines; the
jungle’s stitching. She stripped them from the branches and from around tree
trunks until she had a tangled pile as high as her knees. Working as fast as
she could, she began to weave the fine vines around the frame as evenly as she
could. That done, she tucked the first leaf into the viney framework and left
enough of the covering on the ground to fold over. She worked the next leaf in
beside the last, then the next. She didn’t realize she hadn’t left an opening
in the structure to crawl through until she’d made one complete revolution.
Working carefully, she spread the vines apart until she had a crawl hole. She’d
worry about closing the door later.
It was dusk, and the first small
insects began to buzz past her. The sight of them caused her heart to race. She
looked around for bigger, more ominous pests.
Working even faster, she tucked
in each leaf, overlapping the one below until she had the whole frame covered.
She’d saved the largest leaf for last and folded it over the very top and
strapped it down with two pieces of vine. Using the remaining vine, she wrapped
the structure twice more, making sure the vine pressed against, and closed up,
the worst of the gaps.
She stood back and considered it.
She shook it; it wobbled.
She was hungry, but there wasn’t
enough time to look for food. She double-timed it a few meters away and
relieved herself; she’d be in there until sunup. She stuffed the last of the
leaves inside to cover the floor. Then she crawled through the door, and
working from the inside, pulled the vines down over the opening and tucked
leaves in, sealing it as best she could. By the time she got her cuffs and
collar tightly closed, the first heavy beetle had bashed, as though it had been
thrown, through a loose-fitting leaf into the yurt. She smashed it with her
foot.
Sitting cross-legged and turning
on her butt as she worked, she tucked here and snugged up there until only the
very last remnants of pale light seeped through the ragged seams of her hurried
shelter.
She sat with her arms wrapped
around her knees, staring blankly into the darkness, listening to the insects
plopping and banging and buzzing against the yurt’s thin covering. From time to
time, she tested the integrity of the walls with a gentle push of her
fingertips.
Finally, she lay on her side in a
half-sleep, batting the small insects that buzzed at her face and ears.
It was an eternity before the
moons came up. When they finally did, they announced themselves by casting
their pale white light through the dozens of holes in the tent. She rose up and
spread the leaves above her head just enough to see out. There were the moons,
the small one pointing the way home. She was right on track. Maybe tomorrow she
would reach the clearing.
She lay back down and drew up
tight, hoping sleep would take her and end the night by spiriting her away
toward daybreak. Slowly, surely, exhaustion crept, like a thick fog, over her.
Then, without knowing when, or how or anything of it, she dropped like a stone
into the dark pool of sleep.
She thought it was her own snoring
that awakened her; the sound was very much like that. She opened her eyes and
breathed evenly in case it had been her, and she listened. There was the sound
again, a snort, horse-like, deep and nasal. It was just outside. There was
another sound, too. It was a sound of tearing leaves and the pop of broken
stems, then a grinding
—
the
sound of grazing.
Rising so slowly she barely
moved, Donna leaned close to the wall and parted the leaves with a single
finger. Heart racing, she put her eye to the slit and looked out.
The creature’s head was thin, and
narrow and equine. The eyes were large and round, suited to the dark and placed
wide, to maximize side vision. The muzzle bloomed out slightly into a thin,
wide cut of a mouth that chewed and ground in a circular movement of the lower
jaw, just like any other ungulate she’d ever seen. Large pear-shaped ears sat
high on the thin head and flicked and swiveled, independently, checking
nervously for danger. The animal’s skin looked tough and leathery, perhaps a
defense against the insects. Just larger than a foal, it turned, and she could
see that its body, too, was long and narrow, supported by thin, deer-like legs.
Its tail was long and serpentine, ending in a whisk of thick bristles that
whipped and slapped incessantly at the annoying insects that buzzed around it.
When it turned around completely,
she could make out something foreign attached to its flank. It looked at first
like some strange growth, but when it came more into the light, she could see
that it was actually a plate-sized parasite firmly attached to the creature’s
flesh. From time to time, the creature vibrated its flank and clawed the air
near it with a back foot in a casual attempt to dislodge it.
When the beast turned back toward
the yurt, she feared it would tear the leaves off and eat them. But, just as
quickly as it had moved toward the shelter, it stepped backwards, turned around
the other way and moved slowly off, ears twitching, tail slapping.
It was the first non-insectoid
species she had seen; and although it looked harmless enough, she watched it
with a wary eye until the foliage swallowed it. You couldn’t be sure anything
on this planet was truly harmless.
She pulled her peep-hole closed
and lay back down. Moments later, she felt sleep drape itself like a veil over
her senses. Before she slept, she smiled a very brief smile.
Horsius Applegati.
She didn’t feel the little
disk-shaped tick-thing crawl up her boot and up her leg. Nor did she feel it
when it crawled across her waist and up the back of her arm, its forelegs
waving and making the lightest contact. It found her bare neck and lightened
its touch even more. Then, light as a wisp, it moved onto the warm flesh to a
point just under her chin and flattened itself against that moist, sweet spot.
From a tiny orifice on its underside, the tick protruded a minute knife-like
tongue and began to lick rhythmically at the thin skin under it, slicing
painlessly through to the promise of fluid and blood. Once the cut was
sufficiently deep, the tick extruded a tube-like plug into the slit, sealing it
completely. Next, the bloodsucker regurgitated a tissue-softening fluid from
its gut into the wound. The fluid contained an agent that deadened pain in the
vicinity of the feedhole; and when the enzymes had softened the tissue into
broth, the tick sucked the mixture back up through the tube. It repeated this
process for the next two hours, creating a deep and soft lesion. While it fed,
the tick secreted an adhesive that cemented it firmly to the good, warm,
delicious spot of neck.
* * *
The pale green light was so
welcome she nearly sprang up and out of the yurt for the sheer joy of it.
Prudence and cramped limbs stopped her. She peeked out in three directions
before practically ripping her way out of the flimsy structure. She stood up,
stretched, yawned, and brushed off her clothes. Her jaw and neck ached.
She unzipped the pocket of her
coveralls, pulled out the mirror and looked at her face. Just as she thought,
it was scratched and scraped red in patches and smeared with sweaty dirt. In a
moment of vanity, she plucked and dabbed and brushed at the tangled mess of her
hair with her fingers and smiled at the silliness of it.
When she lifted her head and saw
the miniature version of the thing she’d seen on the horse-thing glued to her
neck, her mouth dropped open as if a string was tied to her chin. A shudder of
disgust ran up her spine.
Watching in the mirror, she
touched it gently with her fingers and saw the legs move just a little in
response.
“You little bastard . . .”
It was coming off. One way or
another, it was coming off right then.
She sat down on the ground and
dug the knife out of her pocket. Before she opened it to do the surgery, she
reached up and took hold of the thing and pulled; just as a test. It stung a
little, but nothing she couldn’t handle. She worked the organism around in a
circle, raising a pinch of skin as she pulled at it.